


The Bank Holiday

by executrix



Series: Sequel to "Cracked Mirror" [1]
Category: Blake's 7, Firefly
Genre: Crossovers and Fusions, Inspired by Shakespeare, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:20:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27351124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: An unsuccessful caper goes way, way South, with Shakespearean intimations. Sequel to "Cracked Mirror."
Relationships: Hoban Washburne/Zoë Washburne, Kerr Avon/Simon Tam, Malcolm Reynolds/Roj Blake
Series: Sequel to "Cracked Mirror" [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1997479
Comments: 6
Kudos: 2





	The Bank Holiday

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Kevin M. Sullivan's "Unofficial Glossary of Firefly Chinese" in "Finding Serenity" for Inara's Folly in section 7. (The numbers are tone indicators.)

_These be seven curses on a judge so cruel:  
That one doctor will not save him,  
That two healers will not heal him,  
That three eyes will not see him,  
That four ears will not hear him,  
That five walls will not hide him,  
That six diggers will not bury him,  
And that seven deaths shall never kill him._ Bob Dylan, "Seven Curses"

1  
Vila looked forward, with pleased anticipation, to the prospect of Avon admitting defeat. No matter how carefully he pondered, or how he twisted it to look at it from different angles, Vila didn't think there was any way to eat bacon and eggs with chopsticks.

Eventually, Avon smashed the bacon into smallish pieces, dissected the eggs with one chopstick held in each hand, and broke the toast into two-inch squares. Then he deposited the shards of egg sunny-side down, garnished them with the bacon pieces, and picked up the resulting shrimp toast analogs with his pointed ebony chopsticks. Easy.

"Miss him, eh?" Vila said. "Wouldn't mind seeing Kaylee again, meself." Avon glared at him.

Blake finished docking the shuttle and walked into the galley.

"Good trip?" Vila asked. "Fancy a cup? There's plenty left in the pot."

"Thanks," Blake said. He had a new approach to management problems--What Would Mal Do?--and he was confident that he had found the perfect solution. "Vila, I'd appreciate it if later on, after Avon and I finish the hardware inspection, you gave us a hand unloading the cartons."

There was a long pause for Blake to sigh, sit down, and enjoy his cuppa, broken by Vila being unable not to ask "What hardware inspection?"

"We're going to see over the entire ship," Blake said. "For as long as it takes. To determine the state of each and every separate piece of metal. And then, when that's done, we'll unpack the EnviroMel and Avon can set it up."

"What, those things they have in clubs, with the music and the holos and the vizcasts everywhere?" Vila asked. "Blimey, that must cost...I dunno, a fortune."

"This one was a snip," Blake said. "Only fifteen thousand credits. Debited to Avon's account. It was a surprise. He wanted to get something special for the crew, something that everyone can enjoy."

Avon thought it would be caddish to point out that Blake didn't like it the last time he bought something that everyone could enjoy, so he didn't. 

2  
It just made sense, as they all (and especially Avon and Blake, though least of all Jenna) convinced themselves later for the initial contact to be repeated. Neither ship's crew encountered all that much congenial company. All sorts of business had been left unfinished. And as for Jenna, well, she was needed on Liberator, which was big enough to hide in when there were guests.

"Hullo, Simon," Avon said diffidently, hovering near the sofa, far enough away to not get pushed away. 

"Well, if it isn't the wombat!" Simon said bitterly. "Eats, roots, shoots and leaves."

"Ah. I suspected that my reception might not be as enthusiastic as I would wish."

"What we did...that was nonsense," Simon told the floor.

"Rather entertaining nonsense, wouldn't you say?" 

"You got me drunk," Simon said.

"Well, no. I expected you to get drunk, and I daresay I facilitated it, but I think you'll have to admit that no one would have made a fuss if you'd stopped after one drink. Or none at all, for that matter."

"But why did you? At all?"

"I'm sorry that I erred in believing that the experience would, at least, beguile the tedium."

"You know what I mean. Goddamnit."

"All right. Because I wanted you so much--" Avon stopped, cursing the coloration that could not be kept out of his words. "And because we belong together."

"Crap," Simon said.

"We deserve each other. We are very nearly sentenced to one another. We're far too intelligent for our own good, we're right too often for anyone else's, and what we use for contraception is our personality. We have chemistry," he said, reaching his fingertips toward Simon's face. Simon shied away.

"That's maudlin."

"It's literal. You don't have much ciflahexadone left, do you?"

"No, there's an endemic parasite on Heldenstein, everybody got it, and at six capsules per person per day, we ran right through the supply. And vice versa."

"Well, it's a perfectly simple synthesis, you can pick up the reagents anywhere, they're not controlled. Kaylee and I could build the apparatus in an afternoon."

"Why?"

"Another way of beguiling the tedium. Because you'd like to be able to source some of your own drugs."

"Because you're sorry you used me and manipulated me?"

"Very well."

"And you say you want me?"

"Yes."

"All right then, _beg_."

"Sod off and die, Simon. Yes, I want you, but not that much."

"Oh, good!" Simon said. "I was beginning to be worried that your brain had been taken over by an alien intelligence. Sit down. Do you ever apologize?"

"Dang ren. I'd estimate the incidence somewhere between meteor showers and lunar eclipses." Avon sat down on the sofa.

"Bodies are-containers. It should mean something. I don't want you ever to touch me again except as your lover."

"All right," Avon said, and to seal the deal, leaned forward, his head on Simon's shoulder.

Simon bolted upright, pushing Avon back. "Jesus!" he said. "We've been having an affair for one _le-se_ minute and already you're trying to play me!" He rearranged them, with his head on Avon's shoulder.

Avon sat with his arms around his young lover, amused but not displeased by the celerity of events. "You feel like a very superior sofa," he murmured. "A bit of springy padding that accentuates the harmonious lines of your frame, tautly covered by smooth fabric." 

"Well, no one's ever called me **that** before," Simon said.

3  
"That's all right," Mal said. "Your money's no good here, Avon. Long as Kaylee says we don't need that stuff to keep flyin', you can help yourself." 

"It's...very industrial," Simon said an hour later, looking down at the odd, roughly pyramidal assemblage of metal, chips, and leads that Avon had set down at the head of the bed. "I'm charmed. That's the best one of whatever that anybody ever gave me." He paused for a few beats and broke down. "What is it? You couldn't synthesize any pharmaceutical molecules with that."

"True enough. It's soundproofing," Avon said, and switched it on.

"It's sort of like Through the Looking Glass malaria," Simon said dreamily, after half an hour of being kissed. He felt like he was flying--well, of course he usually was, then, but he felt a wonderful sense of velocity that showed him some of what River appreciated in leaning against Serenity's hull to gaze at spangled velvet. "I mean, malaria. Characterized by fever and chills that run through all your muscles, but you think that's a **bad** thing. And then you swallow something bitter to make it **go away** , which is just backwards."

"You're so sweet," Avon said, kissing the top of Simon's head. "Of course, if I'd said that, it would have been an insult."

He took a long breath, and unbuttoned two of Simon's shirt buttons. Once he could control the way his back arched, he bent his head and inhaled the mixture of antiseptic and halothane and white soap and latex and cornstarch from behind years of gloves and grapefruit-and-ambergris cologne and the cumin-toasted-on-hot-metal of arousal. Then he kissed right below Simon's collarbone, fervent as an explorer kissing landfall.

4  
There weren't any arrangements or schedules, but every few months, it usually turned out that shore leave would get canceled, in favor of a few people visiting the other vessel. It was safer, the risks were easier to quantify, and there were commonalities of interest: Book and Cally coaxing Orac to decipher Dead Planet Scrolls; Cally once again, making Zoe feeling flattered by a raggedy-ass guerilla's interest in real warfare. Not that Zoe needed much coaxing to vacation anywhere where amazing luxuries like broccoli, baths (and real soap!--not the stuff that Kaylee made out of God knows what in the inter-engine rendering system) were available on tap.

Sometimes Mal wondered exactly why, out of everybody he might have encountered, Blake chose to crew up with a bunch of crooks. Sure, there was a real rebel there, but, the way Mal heard it, Blake just kind of fell on her, he didn't go looking. It had never occurred to Mal (who paid his idea of good money for Serenity) to ask. Blake was at pains not to tell him that Blake didn't exactly have clear title to the Liberator. 

Blake thought it was funny that Avon--who may or may not have been the second-best computer man in the Federation, but was probably at least the second-biggest snob--should have struck lucky with the Alpha to End All Alphas. No wonder he was so knocked sideways by the young doctor. As for his own vis-à-vis, Mal was much more of a...rough diamond. 

Blake knew that Grading didn't mean much outside Sector One. He wondered idly if Mal's upbringing on an agricultural world would imply that he was a Gamma, or if the family possession of some property pushed them up into one of the Beta categories.

Blake often thought that the encounter between the two crews had been a significant one (not believing in Fate, he couldn't call it a fateful one). The trouble was that it could turn out to be either the best thing that ever happened to him or in the running for one of the worst. He continued to hope that Mal's estrangement from what Blake still didn't believe was the losing side was only temporary. In which case, his return would be good news indeed for rebellion. 

Blake knew there was no way to coax him away from that naffing sled of his on any permanent basis. But then Blake wasn't sure that he **wanted** Mal around on any permanent basis. Two captains on Liberator's flight deck would be uncomfortably like two cooks in one kitchen. 

Zoe would be at least as much of a catch. Blake knew how crucial the unheralded contributions of the noncoms were to every victory. But Zoe would never desert Mal. If Mal, then Zoe. Acquiring Zoe meant Wash would come along. That could be a prickly problem indeed, if Jenna felt usurped. Then again, she might be glad of the chance for more uninterrupted nights' sleep. And if Jenna opted for the life of crime, having Wash around could be a lifeline.

Blake pondered whether Jenna's attachment to Liberator (at least as strong and, Blake thought, better justified than Kaylee's love for Serenity) would outweigh an opportunity to resume her interrupted criminal career. He grinned. The odds of Jenna and Inara settling down as happy shipmates were in the low nils, because they genuinely detested each other. Blake's theory was that Jenna had felt impelled to grant favors to far too many men she didn't fancy ever to feel comfortable in the company of someone who made that a career choice.

Kaylee, now...she had done wonders after the catastrophic damage the space battle of Hoeventwatch inflicted on Liberator. But in the normal course of things, there was no need for a mechanic amid all those self-repairing systems. Blake liked Kaylee. She was just the kind of idealistic young woman who could and should be part of the fight for freedom. But something in Blake's heart misgave at the idea of putting a gun into her hand. It made Blake wonder what Cally had been like, when she was young and ingenuous. 

Blake didn't feel any need for a chaplain for the Liberator, although he did know how level-headed and competent Book could be. In his limited experience of organized religion, Blake rather tended to class the clergy as conservative. He wasn't sure if the Shepherd would be at all interested in joining the Liberator, unless he would opt for the nearest crime-free environment. (Inara, as not merely a respectable citizen but one who had voted for Unification, didn't enter into Blake's calculations except to the extent she might carom off Jenna.)

As for Jayne, Blake wouldn't have him as a gift, and he didn't trust him any further than he could throw a shuttle. Blake, and many of his former comrades, had seen faces like that. Often, the last thing they ever saw was the face of a man who, depending on employment conditions, might spend his work shift shoving loaves of pumpernickel into ovens. Or people. And he'd be just as happy working for the new regime as the one it replaced. In fact, one of the things that made Blake worry about the ambiguities of victory would be the need to put Jayne and his ilk on the payroll. 

However, Blake had no intention of doing without Avon. The main problem was finding a way to keep him from flying the coop. As far as Blake could tell, Avon had a much better track record as a revolutionary than as an embezzler, but on the other hand Avon **wanted** to be an embezzler. In the short run, then, that made Simon the crucial element. They all owed a lot to the tissue regenerator, and Cally's paramedical skills, but Blake acknowledged the usefulness of a trained doctor onboard. Blake knew that Simon had at least been willing to make deals with rebels in the past. Simon's more recent experiences had not been of a sort to enhance his respect for constituted authority, and there had been plenty of...Blake edited out "toffee-nosed gits" and substituted "individuals fleeing a life of privilege"...in the Freedom Party.

Simon's departures from the straight and narrow had occurred in aid of rescuing River. The tradeoff for gaining a full-time medico carried with it the inevitable consequence of...well, someone who was always as much of a handful as Cally was when possessed. Blake thought he could cope with that; there were plenty of cabins in the Liberator, after all, and most of them had doors that could be locked.

The best case scenario would make Blake the admiral of a two-ship revolutionary fleet. The worst case would be a fracture where Vila and Avon and perhaps Jenna upped stakes and signed on with Team Crime. 

5  
"See here, Mr.....see here, Avon," Kaylee said. "Just want to let you know, that I bear no hard feelings."

"I'm glad," Avon said. {{That release of "sincerity" will need some more beta testing before launch.}}

"Sure, I was upset at first. But then I got to talking with Inara, and she said that she bet I could build her some stuff she could use for work. Gadgets. What with how much I like engines and all. And we did some backwards engineering..."

"Reverse engineering?"

"Naw. The stuff that worked the best's what we tested the most. So you see, it all worked out for the best."

6  
Vincenzo Mandorlini, the Duke of Via Nostromo 4, pinched the bridge of his nose and wished for something to cool his eyes, which burned like supernovas. He knew he had to get right away, he couldn't face another day of governing a planet where corruption boiled over and no one, least of all himself, satisfied his expectations. {{He who the sword of Heaven would bear, must be as holy as severe}}, he told himself sternly. And then, {{Fuck THAT for a game of soldiers. I've got to get away from here, get right away....}}

"Highness?" asked his advisor, Colonel Eshkalon, handing him a cup of wine. "D'Angelo!" the Duke whispered. "Summon him! I must leave-engage in an embassy-and the steadfast D'Angelo will be my deputy. Mortality and mercy in Nostromo will live in his tongue and heart. He will be full ourself, and you will be his vicar as D'Angelo is mine. And the sin will be purged." 

The Duke's shaking hands scrawled a proclamation and scattered sand over the ink. Just behind his eyes, he could see the blood and foul black matter spurting forth.

"Lend him our terror..." the Duke said. {{And perhaps, if I can transfer it to him, I'll be able to sleep.}} 

7  
" _Ni3gao4su5 na4 niu2 ta1 you3 shuang1 mei3mu4_?" Inara said.

" _NEE gow SOO na nyew taYO swong MAY moo_ ," Avon said.

"Perhaps...well, let's try that again," Inara sighed. She hoped that Niska was, if not out of town with a musical, trying to coach a tone-deaf person in a tonal language.

8  
"How was Crime?" Blake asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor of Serenity's bridge. 

"Middling," Mal said. "How was Insurrection?"

"I'm sorry to say we hit a bad patch. Gan--the big man--do you remember him? Well, he didn't make it. We were on a raid, and he was trapped in an explosion."

"I'm sorry," Mal said, reaching down to take Blake's hand. "That's what makes a man a leader. Wanting all his men to come back safe, knowing that they all won't." 

"When you were...in the war, I suppose you must have lost a lot."

{{A lot of my men. And, also, everything.}} Mal thought. "Damn right. If the Alliance promised all the vets 40 acres and a mule, they could even afford to stump up." 

"Did you choose it? The Army, I mean?" 

"You need guns to hunt game, sometimes to protect your place," Mal said, "Back on Shadow we all had Home Patrol training. When we tried to protect our place for real, it wasn't such a big step." 

"The first time I held a gun in my hand," Blake said, thinking back to the cellar and its black-painted windows (so no Trooper would see a light after curfew) "well, it wasn't much of a gun, I knew that it wasn't loaded and in fact the firing pin had been removed. I knew all that, but I still couldn't pull the trigger."

"Learned, though, didn't you?"

"God help me, yes." {{To kill with your hands, to feel the ebb of the life you've taken-the acute form of the pain. To kill by directing Vila to press a button...the chronic form.}}

"Well, considering the way we live, I'm sure that the same thing'll happen to Simon. That'll be a worry off my mind, not having to watch out for him so much. 'Course, it could be argued that the job's already spoken for. Your mechanic certainly did take a shine to him." 

"Ahhh...," Blake began, uncertain of how to phrase it. "You didn't have a personal interest in the young man, I hope?"

"Takes more than a pretty face to get my dick stiff," Mal said. Then he grinned, "Oh, who'm I fooling, no it don't. But it takes more than that to get it out of my pants. You got no call to be jealous on that account. Even though he ain't lyin' down to do it, he pulls his weight in my crew. He's brave, and he's loyal," Mal said. "Far as I'm concerned, that makes him a good man. Hell, Zoe'd skin me alive if she heard it, but far's I'm concerned, she's as good a man as any I've ever known."

"Don't tell Cally either, but I'd say the same of her."

9  
When River came through the door, Simon was sensually, voluptuously, even greedily doing what he loved most to do in bed. 

"He'll be flat out for another two hours at least, unless you impersonate a beeper," Avon told River. He had a flatscreen propped up against Simon's blue-and-white striped pajama jacket. "I hope for your sake this is an emergency." 

"Oh, it's you, Kerr. You have hair on your chest," River said. "Simon wouldn't let you do anything to me anyway."

"That's not unusual for Caucasian males with dark hair. I can probably search this..." (he was reading a physiology textbook) "for some statistical evidence." 

"Simon doesn't."

"Yes, thank you, I am reasonably cognizant with the Ordinance Survey Map of your brother."

"I don't like you," River said.

"I'm not {{mad about}}, he thought but censored, "particularly enthralled with you either. That's what families are all about. You take the hand you're dealt. Look, Riv', it's to your advantage, having me around. Anyone who tries to harm you has to go through me, and I'm considerably more experienced in hitting the things I shoot at than Simon is."

"Don't call me Riv'."

"Don't call me 'Krrrrr' in that designedly annoying vowel-less fashion. Is that what you wanted to talk about?" 

"No, I didn't want to talk to you at all. I wanted to talk to Simon but you're there. Well, ask Simon when he wakes up. I might as well ask you too," River said. "Inara wants me to teach morning class so she can practice. They teach them ballet, you know, at the Companion Academy."

"Does Simon like ballet? Doing it, I mean, not just watching."

"Loves it. Used to come to class with me until he surrendered to the patent axiom that he dances pretty much like a capybara going for a triple axel." River reached under the blanket. When she stopped after capturing one of Avon's feet, he flinched a little but merely flipped the flatscreen over to weight down the sheets and blankets covering his lap. "Wo cao!" she said. "Your feet are like scallion bings."

"Flat, presumably, rather than speckled with green."

"God, what I've got to put up with," River said from the doorway.

"That's what Orac always says." 

Avon clicked the book open on the screen again, drew a circle on the sole of Simon's foot with his big toe, and put the flatscreen down again. He decided that he didn't really need Simon the way he needed oxygen, either straight up or with hydrogen. It was more the way he needed food, in terms of how long it would take to actually kill you, and the crescendo of suffering that would be succeeded by motionless apathy.

Simon half-woke. Avon moved the flatscreen. "What happened?" Simon said muzzily. "I heard talking."

"River was in here...no, don't worry, she's fine...she wanted to ask if you wanted to take ballet class."

"I was asleep," Simon said, with irrefutable logic. Avon bent forward to nip his earlobe. "You," he said, "Could sleep through the Grand National. If it were being conducted by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And you were sprawled across the start line."

They sorted themselves into their favorite position, their four long legs interspersed, Avon's arms crossed over Simon's chest, his chin hooked over Simon's shoulder. "It feels good with you here," Simon said. He could feel Avon's voice as well as hear it (in the ear that wasn't dedicated to listening for River). "Claustrophiliac."

"I could hold you like this forever," Avon said. He could feel Simon's voice vibrating against his hands. "As if Time's arrow would go straight through you and spare me."

"You're not fooling anyone," Simon said comfortably.

10  
"Well, if it ain't the three Siamese Twins," Jayne said, looking at Avon and Inara perched on the sofa, amicably bickering about the long-range implications of the Sector Four weather forecasts on grain harvests this season, and eventually on pork-belly futures. Simon, his feet up on the coffee table, sat next to Inara. He was reading a novel that, although described as the heir to The Brothers Karamazov, didn't seem to bear any resemblance to that masterwork other than being long and depressing.

Avon and Inara could happily talk about their investments until the cows got shipped to their new home planet, but Simon didn't mind being distracted from the novel when River came into the lounge. 

"Hello, cookie," Inara said. "Do you feel like a game of bridge?"

"I'm not playing with anybody except Simon," River said. 

"All right, then don't," Avon said. "See if I care." Simon glared at him. Avon shrugged and turned his palms upward in graceless surrender. "Fuck me, I'm not playing bridge against a telepath." 

River tilted her head. "Everybody else I ever heard say that, it was in the subjunctive."

"Now let's see who cares," Inara said. "And it was your idea in the first place. What about you, Jayne? Want to raise the average level of maturity around here?"

"Naah, I don't play no hard games where you gotta think." 

11  
Colonel Eshkalon had been the Duke's most trusted counselor for decades, and he was hurt to be passed over. And he thought that he could do a better job: he would read all the petitions, patiently hear all the cases, serve as an advocate for the accused as well as the dispenser of stern justice. The only thing that seemed to interest the ice-blooded D'Angelo was the punishment that he could impose before he brusquely moved on to the next case.

But perhaps Eshkalon was too soft to be a righteous judge, too much inclined to mercy, too interested in why a weak man thought he was entitled to step away from the law's clearly marked path and into the uncharted woods. D'Angelo knew the difference between the Temptation and the Fall. Eshkalon, who had so often felt temptation himself, couldn't take the spectator's long-range view of the matter.

12  
Mal walked past the teapot and poured himself a cup of coffee. "It's ten a.m.," he said. "Anyone know where my gorram crew is?"

Blake, entering from the other door, walked past the coffeepot and poured himself a cup of tea. "Or my computer?"

Jayne stabbed congee with a cruller and licked the end. "Doc's up near the engine room, getting his knees all bent."

Mal turned to Blake. "Don't go judgin' us all by him. Some of us can be positively civilized."

"Well, that's what I'm talking about. Civilized. Puttin' on the dog. River's got 'em all lined up, doing that fancy dance stuff." He was going to say "poof's football," but that didn't seem politically correct or, rather, survivable.

"This I gotta see," Mal said, and turned his head to see if Blake was coming along. 

In one of the hallways, Kaylee had attached a length of spare wasteline piping to the wall. Lined up at the barre were Inara, Cally, Simon, Kaylee, and Avon. River moved back and forth along the line, swatting at misaligned body parts. 

"Grand battement, plie, flex..., oh, sorry, Cally," River said. She kept forgetting the Auron taboo against showing the sole of the foot. "Three battements, battement pique, pique, close, en croix. Orac, a three-four, please."

"I fail to see how you could mistake an organism of my capacities for a....jukebox," Orac said from its perch on a crate that had once held apples. 

"Okay, come to center now," River said. "An adagio, Orac. Something for turns."

"Plie," Avon said, and Simon did. "Up now..." and Simon rose into a pirouette. Avon put his hands on Simon's waist--one pushing, one pulling, like working a potter's wheel, and then again as Simon began to fall out of the turn. 

"You'll never hold him," River said.

"Do you think I don't know that?"

"Memento mori," River said. "As you are, so I was. As I am, so you will be."

13  
"Does he call you 'baby'?" Blake asked. At least Serenity and its occupants offered a new and seemingly inexhaustible topic to while away the long Liberator night watches.

"Occasionally," Avon said. "At moments of minimum accountability. I suppose it's hard to blame him. It is, after all, nearly homonymic with 'baobei'."

Blake shook his head. Quite apart from their individual idiosyncracies, Blake attributed the oddness of the Serenity crew to the fact that they came from Sector Three. It had been less than a decade since the Federation imposed Unification, and Sector One norms were spreading fairly slowly, even in the Core worlds of Sectors Two and Three, where customs such as circumcision and colorful Mandarin idioms were common. "They're not...like us." 

14  
If Avon and Simon couldn't dance like dancers (and God knows they couldn't), at least when they didn't have anything pressing to do, they could sit on the floor in contorted positions like dancers. (River, Inara, and Cally could all lie down on the floor and stretch their right legs behind their left ears, although they had enough sense not to do it when Jayne was around.)

"Simon," Avon said, his face not actually all that close to his knee in a hurdler's stretch, "You don't have any particular attachment to the itinerant life, do you?"

"Only in the sense that we can keep breathing only as long as they can't find us," Simon said, pushing his knees down toward the floor. "Or rather, if they found us I'd be the lucky one. I'd just die horribly."

"Double boat," Avon said, moving toward Simon on the floor. He opened his legs in second position and extended his arms to Simon.

"I hate this one," Simon said, nevertheless getting into position.

"Fine. Don't whine to me when you don't improve." Simon leaned backward until the choked grunt warned him to come back to starting position.

"Well, let's say I could figure out a way to alter the records so that you two had impeccable pedigrees. Then they could look for Simon and River Tam forever, while...oh, let's say Allegra Lu, reclusive poetess, lived on her brother...Julian's estate. While the respected young scientist and entrepreneur divided his time between the corner office and the surgical suite as he and his...partner developed sturdy and comparatively inexpensive computerized diagnostic units for the Rim worlds."

"What's the point of talking?" Simon said, after they'd been back and forth half a dozen times. Before his bank accounts had been frozen, he might have been able to...well, buy a few champagne lunches for venture capitalists, but that would have been about it. "You can't deliver, can you?"

"As you know, slanderous allegations were made against me," Avon said, "That I stole five million credits."

Disappointment washed over Simon's legible face. One of the things he liked about Avon was the utter lack of tribute that vice paid to virtue. (Another thing he liked was the reassurance that someone so much like himself had managed to live to be nearly forty in a disorderly milieu that made Simon skeptical of his own chances of reaching twenty-seven. Or, as River in her role of Job's comforter liked to say, "Well, at least he isn't as old as both of us put together.") 

"I stole six," Avon said. "So I've still got the other million, plus investment returns."

Simon dropped Avon's hands, pulled his legs together, and hugged his knees. "If you had a million credits, why didn't you go get them, as soon as you got free of that prison ship?"

"Oh, you know, the press of events," Avon said. "But now I think...don't you?... it's time to press back against them." 

15  
"Looks like we're right nearby to you," Mal waved to the Liberator. "Nearest planet's Via Nostromo 4. And it's almost time for the Pally."

"Oh, yes," Blake said. "I've heard of that. It's a sort of horse race, isn't it?"

"Well, sure, if you could get the Shepherd to admit that his Holy Host's a kind of a cracker. My point being that over there, they go stark mad about that damn race. They practically shut the planet down for the three days. You can barely get a bottle of overpriced champagne the whole time, because the fella who'd otherwise sell it to you is standing on an expensive balcony looking for the horses. The fella who'd shake it up to make a big pop is standing on the sidewalk trying to see over some other dumb bastard's head. My point bein', why don't I park my boat there where my people can't get into any trouble, and come see you?"

"I think that's a splendid idea," Blake said. "I missed you."

"No need to take on," Mal said, pleased. 

16  
Simon heard a rumble of conversation (as far as he could tell, about plasma physics), and had to squint to see the remote corner of catwalk where River and Avon sat. He could also smell smoke. When he rushed forward he saw that they were sharing a cigarette. 

"Kerr, what the **hell** do you think you're doing? That you can indulge in that disgusting habit yourself is bad enough, but a **child**...."

"I've been trying to teach K'rr to catch a fish dive," River said. "We're taking a break. He's useless too, but it's less Freudian that way."

"Don't be foolish, Simon," Avon said more or less at the same time. "First of all, River would not be considered a child by any reasonable measure. Her recent aversive experiences have, if anything, forced her to mature more quickly. There were only two left in the packet, so virtue, or at any rate forced abstinence, will come soon enough. You wanted us-River and me that is-to achieve a greater measure of rapprochement, and we are trying our best. And-what is that now, fourthly? Fourthly. Our enemies overlap rather than strictly being identical, but you could buy a fucking Mark IV cruiser with the aggregate prices on our three heads, so the most serious risks to our health..."

He stopped, as Simon grabbed the cigarette out of his hand, took a deep drag, coughed, and bogarted the cigarette butt so fiercely that all Avon and River could do was finish up the last cigarette by themselves.

17  
"This will last out a night in Russia, when nights there are longest," D'Angelo said, swiping his hand disgustedly at the papers covering his desk. All of the planet seemed to be one shameful part, hideously epicene, from which a grasping hand somehow rose. There was nothing but greed-for money, for forbidden flesh-and the outcome of that greed was nothing but filth. 

He could feel the filth submerge him, and it poisoned his greatest pleasure. He could no longer lose himself in prayer, because of the resentment he felt for whatever foolish or cruel or dead or still, as ever, fictitious Thing had created his horrible planet and dumped him in it.

D'Angelo was glad that he had the power to dispense swift justice. It pleased him that the ways of his planet did not build vast dungeons or prescribe lengthy periods of confinement. The lash was meted out to the offender who was petty as well as criminous; the axe, to the more ambitious. D'Angelo did not favor prisons, because he was certain that it was no more likely that offenders would repent in their prisons, than that milk left in a barrel unattended would turn to wine. 

18  
Avon clenched his hands tighter on the arms of the chair. Simon sat in his lap, and Avon desperately wanted to thrust but knew it would be as catastrophic as Orpheus' turning around to look at Eurydice. As it turned out, it was the last time, but then Avon had expected every time to be the last. The fear of loss potentiated his senses, like cocaine. Or, for that matter, vitriol. Back before what went around came around, **he** had granted only those favors that suited him, and now he knew exactly who was in control. 

Simon stood up and walked across the room. Avon blinked-it was not a move that had occurred to him when he was young and invulnerable and his admirers besotted enough to be desperate. "All right," he said. "That's it, then?" He looked around to see where he'd stacked his clothes.

"For God's sake, I just went to get some more lubricant," Simon said, dispensing neatly from the tube and returning, this time facing Avon. "Don't you trust me **at all**?"

"An essay question," Avon said.

19  
"Checkers? That's boring," Vila said. It wasn't shaping up as much of a visit. Kaylee still wouldn't give him the time of day. Even Manuel the rat seemed to have forgotten him.

"Yeah, but it's all right there on the table, so I can't figure out any way you could cheat," Wash said. 

"I'm wounded!" Vila said. "Vitally wounded!" He clutched his stomach.

"What, you want me to believe you don't cheat? I saw you play TallCard."

"No, that I couldn't figure out a way. I cheated at Speed Chess."

"Way I hear it, you had lots of help."

""Oh don't ask Avon, he'll tell you he created the world in seven days. Without any help. It's a hell of a life I lead, Wash, what with Blake ordering me around and Avon strutting." 

"Oh, and you think mine's any better?"

"'Course it is," Vila said. "Cozy set-up, and when you do crime nobody pretends there's any noble reason for it."

"Cozy! There's always somebody ordering me around."

"Wash, for people like us there always **is**."

"What, you're calling us a couple of also-ran sled dogs?," Wash said. "For damn sure, the scenery never changes. I just want to be--well, not the master in my own house, I want to **be** in my own house, not hanging around depending on somebody else. Who just happens to be my wife's own little portable Buddha shrine."

Vila didn't really understand the impulse--the more you had, the more people like him would be able to steal--but he knew it was a common one. 

"VN's a funny little place," Vila said. "Mostly poor people, of course, but some bloody rich ones. New money--the whole place's new, really--so they go in for big houses, big flyers, big jewelry. Maybe now that we're here, we can find a way to turn a profit on it. Just you and me. Nobody else. Day job, just two shares, a good take."

Wash shrugged. "Y'know, if this was a good score, it would have occurred to Mal."

"Oh, I'm not saying that it's a good score in the general run of things, but this Pally of theirs is a special case. Sounds like except for the bits with the horses...and I'd want to stay away from those anyway, nasty bitey things, horses...and they kick...and it's a long way down...the whole planet's a ghost town. And do ghosts Take It With Them, I ask you? They do not. They leave it in the bank vault. Which I might hesitate to open, what with live guards all around. But not with ghost guards being not-there."

20  
"You can't wear those," Coral Daygree's mother told her. "Fancy! Wearing garnets to a Pally Cotillion!"

"But they look nice with my dress," Coral said. She hoped that if Nicko Breughert danced with her, he'd look at her face (and think she was pretty) instead of looking at those fat ugly earrings.

"Your DoubleAunt Olivia gave you Grandmother's diamonds for your Fifteen," Coral's father said. "If you don't wear them, she'll notice, and be insulted. And then when she Bows To The Ancestors, she won't leave you a red chabbo." 

Coral and her footman, the indentured man Augustus, had to wait for almost ten minutes for the one watchman (resentful at having to work, and well over half-drunk) to pass the bank on his rounds and let them in to the huge building and then stroll off, clanking his huge ring of keys. 

"This place gives me a cold grue," Coral said. "All empty and hollow! I can't wait until we get my earbobs and move on back to civilization."

As Augustus was the first to note, the vault was not quite as empty as they had been given to believe.

Wash and Vila traded panicked glances. Each of them independently came up with the plan of seizing Coral as a hostage. Each of them independently rejected it. They didn't have any real weapons--well, any real weapons they could use. Zoe, even unarmed, could have made short work of Augustus, and Blake or Avon or Cally could have created a good bit of havoc with Vila's lock-dissolving kit. But Wash and Vila both reached the same conclusion at the same time. They wouldn't even try to hurt a girl, a girl who just wanted some earrings to be pretty at a party.

"Run, Mamzelle!" Augustus said, seizing Vila's arm and wrenching it behind his back. "Run, and be safe, and call for the constable." 

Vila jerked his head to signify that Wash, too, should make a run for it, and by the time Augustus wrestled Vila down to the floor, Wash reluctantly decided to take the advice and accept Vila's sacrifice.

As luck (good or bad according to one's perspective) would have it, there was a constable quite nearby.

21  
River had the bridge, which would be scary if the ship hadn't been stationary. "Seen Wash, honey?" Zoe asked.

River picked up the triceratops. "He and Vila stole away. They tried to steal Away but they couldn't." She pinched the dinosaur, behind its flaring collar of spikes. Zoe really wanted to demand why River hadn't told her that when it happened, but she saved the two seconds of CrazyGirl intoning at her that she hadn't asked. 

Zoe didn't think much of gambling. She'd rather spend her money, when she had any of it, on something that would last or at least give you a good memory instead of pouring a lot of it down a rathole on the chance of getting some more. If the rest of the crew was in a casino or at the track on business-theirs or the establishment's--sometimes she'd play roulette, bet on a horse with a funny name, or buy a lottery ticket, and she was a fair to middling TallCard player. 

But what she liked least of all was blackjack. Most of it was luck. In any situation, Zoe would always rather get up off her rump and do something than trust to luck. But when you had to stand or take the card that likely would bust you, you knew that it was your own damn fault if you made the wrong play. There were just two choices, not a million like real life. So it was just...stark, if you hit when you should have stood. 

If Mal was here, she'd have gathered up her money and come back with a full-scale Welcome Wagon. Or maybe not: she had a wisp of hope that she could get the whole humiliating business all sorted out, under wraps, and not-talked-about before Mal got back from his dirty weekend. She never trusted Jayne without Mal to keep him in check. She wouldn't have trusted Simon to know which end of the gun had the trigger. 

She still hadn't made her mind up about Book: whether he was a real Shepherd, or that was his cover for some kind of swindle or some kind of sell-out. She wasn't unfamiliar with the Jesus Path. When she was a kid, her Granny would always--all right, sometimes, when they remembered it was Sunday and they could get a solid Cortex connection--downwave the prayer meetings. But Zoe had never tried to talk Mal out of throwing away his cross, on the basis of what it used to mean to him or any other. If Book was on the level, she wouldn't want to put this on his conscience. If he wasn't, she wanted to keep him as far away as possible.

Zoe was neither the kind of person who confided nor Avon the kind of person who invited confidences. So she didn't think seriously about bringing him in. She didn't rule out the possibility that he might have been a man of some value, at least if he hadn't clicked so thoroughly on stupid.exe the minute he saw Simon. And he damn sure didn't ride herd on his troops. Zoe thought it was a lot of Avon's fault that that DomeRat cocksucker got the chance to get Wash involved in this hailstorm of fuck in the first place.

So it looked like she was on her own on this one. She ran to her cabin and gathered up all their money, including their Retirement Fund. It hurt to unbuckle the tie-down from her belt and her leg, but jailhouses usually had metal detectors. She slipped a ceramic foldblade in her boot and jammed four tampons and a spark lighter into her pocket. No one would look twice at those, and damn if there wasn't usually a bottle or so and something flammable in most places that you wanted to leave before the band played Goodnight Ladies.

Zoe knew she was a wolf. She was shiny with that. But for her, the best part of being a wolf was the pack. And it didn't sit too well with her heart, the thought of coming in shooting, probably kill a bunch of folks who were just doing their job, all to clean up a mess her man made. 

22  
"I wonder how they're gettin' on," Mal said lazily. 

""Well, I suppose if they'd starting killing one another, Vila would have called to complain," Blake said. He trailed a hand down his friend's back. Mal captured the hand and kissed its palm.

"Half the time I feel like they divided up the sheep and the goats, And I'm the goatherd. And my bunch, I wonder if 'adult' means anything to 'em except 'old enough to commit adultery.' I'm grateful for the chance to get away from the nursery school for a while." 

Blake couldn't help wondering whether the quality of the mission had something to do with the caliber of those carrying it out. He might even have come up with some tactful formula for verbalizing it if the relationship had been....more serious.

"Jenna was kind enough to offer to cover my watch," Blake said. (Actually, what she'd said was, "For Chrissake, Blake, I'm not going back **there** , and I'll take over your shift if you agree not to make me.") "Shall I fetch us a cup of...I mean, a cup of coffee for you and cut some sandwiches?"

"Got any more of the ones with meat in 'em?" Mal asked, although he didn't want to get too particular about the kind of critter; he didn't suspect Blake of Reaver tendencies. "I could get used to this life of luxury."

Blake leaned down to kiss him. "I'll expect reimbursement for services received."

"Again?" Mal said. "Hey, not bad for a couple of mean old men."

23  
Zoe walked up the long flight of marble steps of the Palace of Justice. A few bribes later, she was in D'Angelo's office, where he habitually worked late into the night, emptying the red boxes that filled up the next morning. There were so many nights when he didn't bother to have a torch-bearer accompany him through the dark, cold streets to get his few hours of unrestful slumber, that a cot had been set up behind a screen.

"The men from off-planet, who you found robbin' that bank?" she said. The smile froze on her face when she saw the perspectives of nothingness in his eyes. "Well, they're real sorry they ever tried that out on your fine planet. Let 'em go, and I can swear to you from the bottom of my heart, that they'll get into our ship, we'll go away, and we'll never be back to trouble you again."

"You don't understand our ways," he said. "They are condemned. They must die."

{{Whole _tamade_ Alliance said that about me for four long years., and here I still am.}}

"Look," Zoe said. "They did wrong. Nobody's denyin' that. But here...." She put the money on the table. 

"You dare to think I can be bribed?"

"Course not," Zoe said calmly, counting up the ways this had gone south already. "We'll pretend that the bank, and them that had their valuables there, went to law and wanted to get damages. Fair's fair, and here's the damages. Up to you to decide who should get 'em."

"What's that around your neck?"

Zoe found that she had her fingers clutched to spasm around it. "It's a remembrance of my husband," she said. 

"You're married," he said.

"Sure am."

And for the first time, D'Angelo looked up from the papers strewn on his desk and really looked at her. He saw strength and pride, the integrity of an unshattered soul. He'd forced the brave and proud into abjection before, and often that was enough to give him at least a flicker of pleasure. Every day of his high office had, he thought, drained him of a little more of the capacity to feel anything at all. 

{{The sweet uncleanness}} he thought. {{I can see the hatred that she feels, and I can force her to my will. And I can steal her chastity to punish the man who would steal our goods. The brutish rutting followed by the bestial sleep.}}

"If you would beg a boon from me, then you must serve my turn," he said. "Give me that necklace."

She stared at him, nonplussed. There was a second during which she decided that of course she'd step in front of a bullet for Wash. She'd take a beating for him, from a man who used his fists to inflict pain and take away dignity. She'd do that even if Wash was in the wrong in the situation. So, why not do this? She unhooked the necklace. 

"Now strip," he said, wrenching at the screen so hard that it toppled, showing the cot and its crumpled sheets.

24  
"Go back to your ship," he said, rasping frantically at his groin with the edge of the sheet. "Get out of here!" 

It had taken only a few seconds to dispel her understandably insane attempt to think of this as a horrible experience that they would help each other to endure. That they would cling together to stay afloat. No, D'Angelo did everything in his extensive power to ratchet up Zoe's pain and humiliation. 

"My husband," she said. "I have to get my husband and the other man who was with him. You promised."

"I told you, go back to your ship!" he roared, his voice close to breaking into a scream. "Wait until dawn. They will be delivered."

"A deal's a deal," Zoe said, none of the waterfall of panic detectable in her voice. "Got to go get them myself. Now."

His hands shook a little less once his pants were zipped up. By the time he managed to fasten the last shirt button, he sounded nearly himself again. "You daren't question me," he said. "I am the magistrate here. The power is mine. Now go and feel fortunate that I don't have you whipped through town at the cart's tail as the whore you are."

"My necklace," she said. 

He held it over her head, just out of reach. "You don't deserve it," he said.

She thought about killing him right then and there, but she knew it would just make her sacrifice meaningless. If it hadn't always been, right from the beginning.

25  
"Oh, this was your wife's," the guard told Wash. "D'Angelo made her take it off before he fucked her." He raised his hand higher, so the necklace would have further to fall when he opened his hand and dropped it on the floor.

26  
"Who'll watch the watchers?" River said. 

Avon, by then used to getting bulletins from a combination of the FBC Off-World Service and the Delphic Oracle, stopped to assess the signal-to-noise ratio of the statement.

"Incorruption has put on corruption," River told him. "Alas, the downward path. The rank sty of an enseamed bed. Coveting. Taking. And he lied."

"Who did?"

"The judge," she said. 

"What did he lie about?" 

"He's not going to let them go," she said sadly, doing chaine turns away from him. "He told her he was, but he wrote a paper to cut off their heads. He thinks if there aren't any witnesses he'll be able to forget what he did." 

Avon couldn't find any of Vila, Wash, Zoe, or the mule, although (with the help of Simon's encyclopedia), he could find a map of VN with the Palace of Justice clearly indicated.

27  
"May I borrow a thousand Platinum, for a few days?" Avon asked.

Inara thought it over. Avon looked dreadful. Inara knew that Avon wouldn't ask you to pass the milk jug if he thought he could perfectly well genetically engineer his own cow. In lieu, therefore, of asking for the explanation that was bound to be coldly denied all she said was, "Yes. Cash or credit?"

"Cash, please." By the time she returned from her safe, he had written something down on a piece of paper. When she opened it later, and deciphered the elegant, tiny writing, it turned out to be an IOU. Or, in the alternative, an estate claim.

"Jayne, saddle up!" Avon shouted from halfway across the room. Jayne opened his mouth to say "I don't gotta take no gorram orders from you," but the pouch landed, clinking, in the palm of his hand. Once he opened it and peeked inside, he shifted to "Sure, boss. What're we doin' and who to? 'Cause the man that pays the viper calls the ruttin' tune."

Book saw them as Jayne was cleaning Vera and Avon was recharging a Liberator handgun. In a minute or so, he got the whole story and came up with a much better plan. Jayne wasn't happy about leaving Vera behind, but Book talked him around. Avon vanished, reappearing shortly thereafter in a plain black shirt. He took a rosary out of his pocket and hung it around his neck, which caused a momentary crack in Book's imperturbable demeanor. Then he went for a word with Kaylee and Inara and they left before River could have any more words or before Simon could wake up and wonder what was going on.

28  
Wash sort of didn't mind being chained to the stone wall of a cell that wouldn't even pass as a studio apartment in Osiris City, because after all the scheduled alternative was worse. The scary part was that Vila wasn't even trying to get them unlocked. Partly it was because his arm wasn't working quite right. He tried, pro forma, to raise the Liberator but even if they'd been in teleport range the dungeon walls blocked communication. Mostly it was, Wash suspected, because Vila felt about the way Jayne did the time that boy died. 

"There are souls at stake here, Provost," came Book's sonorous voice. "I am a Shepherd of Southdown Abbey, come to hear their last confession." Wash wondered if he was hallucinating.

"And the others?" the Provost's marshall said suspiciously. "A postulant of the Abbey," Book said.

"And you expect me to believe **he** is a Shepherd, too? Despite the wolf's clothing?"

"Unfortunately," came a dry voice that made Vila feel instantly better, "In these lawless times, even men of God must be escorted in the course of our holy work."

"You are come in good time," the Provost said, sadly. "Prisoners are sped at dawn, but by special order of Lord D'Angelo, these two are condemned to die at two of the clock. I am glad that they can make shrift. I have perused the order, and although it says nothing of a priest, nor does it deny them the consolations of the faith. So you may do your office, and I mine, and Lord D'Angelo's orders obeyed withal."

"Then lead us to the condemned cell, and that speedily," Book said. 

The plan was for Book's reading of the Penitential Psalms to provide cover for Avon to unlock the fetters, and for Jayne to clear the path from the cell to the nearest exit. And if they'd gotten there an hour earlier, it might have played that way. 

"We shall stay till the last," Book said firmly.

"Amuse yourself," said the executioner's assistant Pompey, settling the block firmly on the straw. "Tis a curious taste, God wot."

It probably would have made more sense to wait until Pompey had unlocked the prisoners' fetters, but Jayne jumped the gun, or rather the gun he didn' t have. He cut Pompey's throat, and as the body dropped, Avon threw a ring of keys to Book, who was grateful that he could turn his back on what he surmised must have been happening. Seeing the shadows was bad enough.

Avon did have a small one-clip emergency piece in his boot, but there wasn't the time or room to go for it. So he had to improvise with what came to hand. What came to hand was the headsman's axe. There was a degree of redecoration. 

Because of the holiday, there weren't many guards on duty, but there was one, who dropped when Book's boot slammed into the back of his knee. Jayne coldcocked the Provost's Marshal, and they got nearly to the door unstopped until the Provost himself blocked the door. 

This time Avon did fetch the pistol. It didn't look like much. Snicking off the safety sounded more humorous than threatening, as the Provost stood his ground.

Not wanting to hit the femoral artery, Avon sent the shot into the outside rather than the inside of the Provost's thigh. That was as far as he was prepared to go. He damn sure didn't stop to apply a tourniquet, and it wouldn't be surprising if some of them jostled against the Provost as they ran past where he lay, screaming, blood pouring out on the floor.

Once they got the door open and stood on the empty street, Jayne shrugged off the arm by which he was half-dragging, half-carrying Wash long enough to grab his pasukom. "Five-by-five, 'Nara, ready to roll," he said. 

She touched down the shuttle right next to the statute of Duke Emeric III, although Book was the only one in a condition to appreciate what a nice bit of flying that was. The engines didn't even power down: they scrambled aboard and the shuttled bounced right back up before anyone had a chance to notice it. 

Avon and Book rolled the rescued men onto the bed. Jayne and Book sat on the sofa, their eyes not so much glazed as lacquered like a concert grand. Avon went into the shuttle's tiny cockpit, in part to congratulate himself for being the one who was still up on his feet. "Oh, God, Inara," he said. "I'll give you another thousand for this when I pay you back."

She was too busy to glare at him. "Not every fucking thing in the 'Verse is about money, Kerr," she said. 

29  
"Oh, make yourself at home, why don't you?" Simon blurted, scraping at his nearly-shut eyes. Vila was sitting on the examining table, and Wash stretched out on the couch set into the wall. Avon presided over the tea party. He passed out hot sweet tea--a few heaping measures of both sugar and Thorazine in Vila's and Wash's mugs, and in Jayne's and his own, variable proportions of slivovitz. Jayne's shirt was already in the hazmats bin, and he stood at the sink, scrubbing off the blood. 

"He killed the executioner who was going to cut off my head," Vila said. "Wash's too. You must be so proud, Doc."

"Yes," Avon said, looking into Simon's face, and everyone flinched at the tone of his voice. "You must be." 

Everyone--not just vegetarians--knows that you can't have a steakhouse without an abattoir. But they all know it's impolitic to locate the former too close to the latter. 

Avon walked out of the medbay. He paused at the doorway to say, "Vila thinks his arm is broken. I don't--I think his shoulder is dislocated. Could you reduce it, please?"

Simon was irritated that this diagnosis was correct. He felt a little better because Avon's meddling kept him from being able to give Vila a real pain-block for fear of an adverse reaction. He did what he could with a local anaesthetic, but the snap and the scream when he pulled Vila's shoulder back into line didn't do much for anybody's nerves.

30  
A little before dawn, Zoe stumbled back onto the ship.

"It's all right," Book told her, his hands holding up her shoulders. "They're back now. A little worse for wear, but essentially all right."

She batted ineffectually at his hands. "Don't touch me," she said. "You'll get dirty."

He clasped her tighter. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

31  
"Kaylee, you've got to help me."

"I don't gotta do nothin', Simon Tam. All those times I needed you, and you just pushed me away. Payback time, I'd say."

"Incarnadine," he said. "Make the green one red. I need you to warm me up, I'm freezing." 

That scared Kaylee, because she counted on Simon being at least relatively sane. She knew insanity ran in families, but she figured it just ran downward. Once she realized he was spouting literature instead of crazy talk, she felt better.

"You once told me I was the only girl in the world for you. Turned out that didn't mean much, considering the alternative."

"Well," Simon said, "Apart from your own intrinsic attractiveness, right now you're the only person who might get talked into fucking me who hasn't recently killed someone with an axe."

"Man Jesus!" she said. "Damn good thing your parents didn't make a lawyer out of you instead, if that's your idea of sweet talk."

"No," he said. "That's my idea of the last fingernail I'm using to cling to the last cliff at the edge of the end of the world. And I bite my nails." 

Although he thereby scored a decisive victory in the ongoing "Who's Too Proud to Beg?" Competition, Avon took no pleasure in it.

32  
On a ship, the lights are always on, until you turn them off. So, unlike a planetside room, where they would have sat in the gathering darkness because neither of them had the energy to turn on a lamp, Zoe and Wash sat in their cabin, unweeping, unmoving, unspeaking.

33  
The by-then-dried blood hardly showed on the black, but Avon dropped the shirt into the hazmats bin anyway. There was one more of his clean shirts in Simon's cabin, so putting that on closed the file. The teleport bracelet was already on his wrist; he took the spare out of the drawer for the likely case that Vila had damaged or lost his. 

"Come on, Vila," he said, shaking him awake in the Passenger Dorm. 

"Huh?" Vila said. "That you, Avon? You just gave me stuff to make me sleepy. Make up your mind." 

"It's time to leave," Avon said. "We're going back--to the Liberator."

"Home," Vila said, yawning and putting out a hand for the bracelet.

"Yes," Avon said. "You would affix sentimental maunderings to a plain statement of fact."

"The bank job," Vila said. "It didn't work. Jesus, I'll never be able to make it up to Wash. But you came for me." 

"Everyone has lapses in judgment," Avon said. 

"Is your boyfriend coming? He's nice. Too nice for you."

"And there you have it in a nutshell. Blake-Reynolds-Orac-Edward the Confessor--whoever's there? Teleport."


End file.
